Body Mass Index (BMI) is a standard method for assessing body weight. BMI is calculated by dividing a person's weight by the square of his height. A study from Israel found that one third of more than 3000 normal-weight and normal-BMI individuals were still at high risk for diseases caused by obesity, such as diabetes, heart attacks, strokes and kidney damage.

Sinead O'Connor was a very successful and popular Irish singer and musician who in 1987, at age 21, released her debut album, “The Lion and the Cobra,” that made her famous internationally. Her second album, released in 1990, “I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got,” sold more than seven million copies throughout the world and included "Nothing Compares 2 U", which was voted the top single by Billboard Music Awards and earned her a Grammy Award.

Ten thousad people attended the Alzheimer's Association International Conference (AAIC) in Amsterdam on July 19, 2023, which featured more than 3,000 scientific presentations. Much of this conference dealt with amyloid plaques and the drugs associated with them. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved anti-amyloid drugs Lecanemab (Leqembi, Eisai) and Aducanumab (Aduhelm TM), and fast-tracked a third drug, Aducanumab. These drugs may help to slow brain damage caused by amyloid plaques that deposit in and damage the brain as much as 20 years before a person suffers loss of mental function.

The evidence is so strong that eating meats from mammals and processed meats can increase heart attack risk that more than 40 percent of North Americans are trying to reduce their consumption of meat and increase their intake of plant-based foods. But people love the taste and feel of hamburgers and other favorite meats, so the plant-based imitation "meats" such as “Impossible Burger” and “Beyond Meat” continue to gain popularity. We still do not have enough data to know if these plant-based imitations are more healthful than eating meat from animals, but studies that have come in so far look favorable.

In 1930, 33-year-old Marian Anderson responded to this discrimination by going to Europe where she was acclaimed as one of world's greatest singers. Back in the United States in 1939, the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) would not allow the now world-famous contralto to give a concert in Constitution Hall in Washington, DC. Because of this, Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the DAR and asked her husband, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, to have Harold L. Ickes, the Secretary of the Interior, open the Lincoln Memorial for Anderson to perform a concert on Easter Sunday.

Researchers have known for a long time that regular aerobic exercises like walking, jogging or cycling help to lower high blood pressure and also help to prevent strokes and heart attacks. However, there is data to show that a person can suffer a stroke or heart attack while lifting heavy weights because during heavy lifting, high blood pressure rises even higher. Many doctors recommend resistance exercises to help treat high blood pressure, but people with high blood pressure need to be very careful if they try to lift heavy weights.

Many scientific studies show that eating sugar-rich whole fruit is healthful, even for people who are diabetic. However, I tried eating an extremely large amount of fruit (15-20 clementines or 10 regular oranges per day), and my previously normal fasting blood triglyceride level rose to levels higher than 460 mg/dL (normal is under 150). Eating that much fruit had raised my blood sugar level so high that it caused the high rise in triglycerides, which increased my risk for heart attacks.

Lisa Marie Presley died from scar tissue from weight loss surgery. She died on January 12, 2023 at the very young age of 54, from intestinal obstruction caused by previous scar tissue from her gastric-bypass weight loss surgery that was supposed to prevent food from passing through her stomach. The original reports of her death listed the cause as cardiac arrest, and these autopsy findings have just recently been released.

About 22 percent of North Americans ages 85-89 and 33 percent of those over 90 suffer some degree of dementia (JAMA Neurol, 2022;79(12):1242-1249). The risk for dementia can be reduced significantly by exercising and lowering high blood sugar levels, maintaining a healthful weight, and avoiding smoking. Two recent studies show that exercise may be even more important in reducing Alzheimer’s disease risk.

Researchers at the Centre for Ecological Research in Hungary analyzed the death records for 110,148 animals from 191 mammal species that died in zoos and found that carnivorous mammals were much more likely to die of cancer than mammals that rarely or never eat animals. Humans are mammals, so we might expect to see similar results in studies of human diets.